Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-26-Speech-3-104"
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"en.20060426.12.3-104"2
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".
Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour for me to be here with you once again today, for the adoption of the European Parliament’s report on a stronger partnership between the European Union and Latin America. I would like in particular to welcome this excellent initiative and to congratulate Mr Salafranca especially on the great work he has done on this report.
Great attention has been focussed on the emergence of the new political movements in Latin America, which some see as a direct threat to the traditional political, economic and social structures. These phenomena do not have to be seen in negative terms, but rather we should see them within the context of an evolution aimed at achieving a fairer society. I do not believe that there is any need to stress how important it is for this transition to take place by means of existing and reliable democratic institutions.
I believe that the Vienna Summit offers an excellent opportunity to achieve this visibility and to hold that dialogue on social cohesion, but also on regional integration and multilateralism. The Bregenz meeting took place within that context and I am very pleased that it has been a real success.
We now have to move forward with the establishment of a network of association agreements between the European Union and the countries and regions of Latin America. To this end, I would like to recommend that the Member States firstly negotiate with Central America. This decision still depends upon the Central American countries clearly demonstrating that they are moving forward with their own integration strategy, but I am very optimistic, and I believe that these decisions will be formalised at the meeting of the Central American Heads of State or Government that will take place from 5 to 7 May.
With regard to the Andean Community, the situation has unfortunately become more complicated since Venezuela left the Community a few days ago, as we know. I have spoken personally to President Morales and we still hope that the internal meetings within the Andean Community can open up a way forward.
With regard to Mercosur, I know that the situation is much more difficult, unfortunately, but I still hope that Vienna will at least provide strong political impetus in order to make progress with the negotiations that are running in parallel with the Doha negotiations. We intend to consolidate all of your cooperation in economic and development activities by means of aid programmes and we would like significant support from the European Investment Bank, to the tune of EUR 4 billion.
Furthermore, we hope that Vienna will also be an opportunity to announce the creation of a transatlantic parliamentary assembly between the European Union and Latin America. I believe that this will be very important and will also bring the peoples closer together in the future.
Finally, Madam President, it is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that the alliance between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean is stronger and more effective and that it has a long-term future.
As you know, this report represents Parliament’s response to the proposals made by the Commission in its Communication of 8 December. I would like to express my most sincere gratitude for the political support that you have given us and for the way that cooperation between our two institutions has been strengthened.
I believe that, as far as Europe is concerned, the current context is an extremely good one in terms of creating partnership with Latin America. On the one hand, the Council has been most receptive to our Communication and adopted conclusions in this regard at the end of February. On the other hand, the current Presidency sees the success of the 4th European Union-Latin America/Caribbean Summit, which will take place in Vienna on 12 May, as one of the priorities of its working programme. Thanks to the three institutions, therefore, the Commission has the necessary political support to continue moving forward. And I hope that this represents great progress.
This is not enough to make this Summit a success, however. As the English say, 'it takes two to tango’
While Europe is prepared to commit itself more to Latin America, I also hope that there will be a firm commitment on the part of Latin America. I therefore believe that the Vienna Summit also offers an opportunity to test the will and determination of the Latin American countries and I hope that this is translated into concrete progress.
I would like to say to you that I very much appreciate the fact that our two institutions are taking the same line, because we are all convinced that creating a stronger partnership is timely, important and necessary for the following reasons:
Firstly, Latin America is one of the few regions in the world that can be seen as a natural ally to the European Union, particularly given our shared values.
Secondly, there are many challenges that can be tackled more effectively by means of a reformed partnership and one of them is the lack of social cohesion, which affects both Europe and Latin America. I believe that it is very important that we make more progress in this field and I hope that there are genuine concrete results.
Thirdly, I hope that today’s debate on Latin America sends a positive signal to our partners, assuring them that Europe maintains a strong interest in its region. We need strong, solid and reliable partners in Latin America.
I would now like to deal with the next issue facing us, which is the Vienna Summit. This Summit is taking place within a context of significant challenges and exchanges, and also changes, in Latin America and the Caribbean. The majority of countries in the region have adopted democratic systems, they have embarked on ambitious economic and social reforms and they have a great potential for development, but unfortunately there are still great social shortcomings, mainly due to the fact that the economic progress has not reached the majority of the population and this is leading, or has led, to a degree of disillusionment with certain democratic governments, as a result of their inability to comply with the terms of the social pact."@en1
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